Photo by Nick Hamilton
It is 5.30am, just after dawn, and already it is hellishly hot in Phoenix, Arizona. At Estrella jail, the world’s only women’s chain gang is preparing to move out. Marching on the spot, black leather boots thudding heavily on the polished floor and their chains rippling and clinking, they begin their chant. Read the rest of this entry »
Mongrel Magazine
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There is a dark island of blood, about three foot long and maybe one third as wide, in the centre of the dull brown carpet, presumably marking the point where the head hit the ground. For a gunshot suicide, it seems to lack a certain gruesomeness that we have been led to expect from violent deaths. Otherwise the room is more or less unremarkable. A few dumbells lying around the floor, evidence of the former tenant’s less effective method of taking aggression out on himself. I don’t want to admit to being disappointed, but I expected more of a spectacle, visually speaking.
Not that the scene isn’t bizarre and macarbre in its own way: standing over the patch of blood is Shawn Clarke, prized employee of Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. and self-professed ‘Extreme Janitor’, arguing as politely as he can over the price of the clean-up job with the brother and the father of the young man whose remains have soaked into the carpet. Read the rest of this entry »
The impression we get of Socrates from the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon is that of a man who spent a great deal of time sitting around markets and harbours, chewing the philosophical fat with his fellow Athenians. He would establish himself on the steps of the Parthenon (or wherever else was convenient) and start throwing out provocative questions about the nature of virtue or the ideal form of government.
Anyone who happened to be passing by – from the lowliest fisherman to the most eminent arms dealer – could hitch up their toga and hunker down for a bit of ratiocination with ancient Greece’s most important thinker. It is probably no coincidence that the world’s first democracy had such an equal-opportunities approach to its favourite intellectual pastime (unless, that is, you happened to be a woman or a slave, but let’s not quibble over a demographic that only accounted for two thirds of the Athenian population). Read the rest of this entry »
I MAY BE the world’s most promiscuous stalker. In the last couple of days, I’ve left a rambling but scrupulously polite voicemail on Naomi Campbell’s phone, sent a Facebook message to Bertie Ahern and emailed Mohammed Ali (all to no avail). I’ve also chatted with Colin Farrell and Mary Harney, had a slightly stilted conversation with an unexpectedly reserved Graham Norton and – I think most impressively of all – a pleasant and informative talk with Michael Jackson. The latter, it turns out, is alive and well and running a successful pottery business just outside Kilkenny. It’s amazing the people you can track down if you’ve got a phone book, an internet connection and too much time on your hands. Read the rest of this entry »
